A practical blog for impractical people.

December 22, 2009

When You Care Enough to Aggregate the Very Best

There is no better way to please and impress people around Christmas time than to make them something. If you can cook, make them a meal. If you can paint, make them a painting. If you can sculpt, make them a sculpture—you get the picture.

What if you don’t have these talents? What if you’re out of time? I have a totally conflicted suggestion for you: Build them a customized MyAlltop page. Surely you can point and click.

It will take about thirty minutes, but the output of those thirty minutes says, “I didn’t just rush out and buy the first thing I saw at BestBuy. I used my unique geek expertise to craft you something that you can use every day of the year."

It will be our secret that building a MyAlltop page is quick and easy. Here are the steps:

Create a MyAlltop account in their name. You start here. Be sure to use your email address, so that you get our confirmation otherwise they’ll get it and wonder what’s going on. (Here’s a tutorial that will step you through the process if you want more help.)

Make a mental or physical list of their passions. If you don’t know which topics, blogs, or websites they like, casually bring up the question.

Compare their list to Alltop’s topics. You can see all the topics or you can search by categories, keywords, and topic name. With over 750 topics, you will find ones that interest them. For example:

Add feeds to their MyAlltop page. Go to a topic and pick a handful of feeds that will appeal to them by clicking on the +. This is the most challenging step because you may not know much about the topic. But, as a rule of thumb, the most popular feeds are on the top part of an Alltop page.

Bask in the glory. Surprise them on Christmas morning with their customized page. You should bookmark it or set it as their home page if you can.

As I said, this process will take approximately thirty minutes. I built this MyAlltop page for my wife as an example in much less than that. I hope you give this idea a shot and show that you care enough to aggregate the very best. Happy holidays!